For those that use WWE 2 and 3 throughout the curriculum without the workbook,

[deeinfl]

What does a week of writing look like in your house? Does it take too much time to pick out what your child will narrate and dictate from-the right literature? Please share how you do it? I'm sort of in between wanting to buy the workbook, or just working from the textbook and choosing my own topics of narration and dictation???

 

Thanks for any help,

 

Dee

[BabyBre]

We started WWE that way but quickly invested in the workbook because it was so time consuming. An unexpected happy benefit has also been that we've discovered many great stories from the exerpts in the workbooks that the kids want to read more of. If you haven't got much time for planning, I highly recommend the workbooks.

 

We're even shorter on time somehow this year and I've elected to start out using our history readings as our literature passages in an attempt to kill two birds with one stone. So far, that's working out fine, but I think we all miss the variety of the WWE passages.

[abbeyej]

I'm very, very, very glad to have the workbooks. The selections are varied (some things we've read, some things we were planning to read, and a couple of things we would have missed altogether), and I love having it all laid out for me. The *idea* isn't much different than what has always been described in WTM, but I find I'm much, much more likely to *do* it when all I have to do is grab the book.

 

We continue to do additional narrations from history (SOTW) and a Bible story book, but I really do appreciate the WWE workbooks (even though I've tweaked a little here and there along the road -- for instance, I stopped writing narrations *for* my children and expecting them to write them on their own well before WWE expected that). The first editions had *gigantic* lines for printing. Just ridiculous. So with WWE2 my dd used notebook paper for her work. The newer printings seem to have smaller lines? I still think the lines are quite large for our copy of WWE3, but they're usable.

[Mallory]

We are doing WWE 3, but pretty much only using the questions and narrations from SOTW 1. Occasionally I might pick something from literature or science and we do the weeks that are in The Complete Writer, but I love being able to do it with the history we are doing anyway.

[hopeallgoeswell]

Dee,

I used the WWE 2 workbook last year with my (then) 6.5 yo 1st grade dd. The copywork and dictation was no problem for her. But all year long she struggled with narrations. This year, she is now a 7.5 yo 2nd grader and I am using the text (WWE level 2) with her, not the workbook. I am basically doing a bit more for the copywork and dictation (about 5-7 words more) but keeping the grammar focus as written in the text. For the narration portion, she is read the amount as outlined in the WWE 2 section, but now I am doing more of a CM narration with her. Having used both the workbook and the text (picking my own material), I prefer the text. I feel it ties into what she is studying (usually history or her read aloud) and isn't just "another" subject thrown into the daily grind.

 

On a side note: I went out and bought nicely colored heavier paper (that my dd picked out), printed out lines from http://donnayoung.org/f10/penmanship-f/smprint/dpdf/dblank4.pdf on it, and had it spiral bound up top with a cover my dd made from scrapbooking material. She LOVES to do her WWE now!

 

HTH!

[Tam101]

What does a week of writing look like in your house? Does it take too much time to pick out what your child will narrate and dictate from-the right literature? Please share how you do it? I'm sort of in between wanting to buy the workbook, or just working from the textbook and choosing my own topics of narration and dictation???

 

Thanks for any help,

 

Dee

 

I'm using the workbook this year, but last year we just did narrations and dictations from what we were already reading that day. It could have come from SOTW, Science or a chapter out of book we were reading together. I didn't spend a lot of time planning anything, I just looked at what we already doing that day and followed the weekly plan from the WWE textbook.

 

I haven't decided yet which approach I prefer. It's nice to have it all scripted out, but on the other-hand it adds to the course load.

[sassenach]

I am doing WWE 2 this year without the workbook, after using the workbook last year. In large part, I decided to do it myself as a streamlining measure. One of the GREAT benefits to SWB's plans is that they are supposed to go across your curriculum. After seeing the way she did it for her workbooks, I knew that I could handle picking out my own selections. I sat down with our planned read alouds, history and science spines for the first 10 weeks, along with the WWE text and Startwrite. I would first look at WWE to find out the guidelines for that week. Then I would go through the texts and find a sentence that fit. Then I would type up the page using SW. Easy-peasy. It took maybe an hour, tops.

[KuniMom]

I bought the workbook. It was one less thing for me to think about and try to figure out.

[oldskool]

I started out without the workbook, but soon ordered it. I love the selections that are chosen and it has exposed us to many good books that we went ahead and read the entirety of. Well worth the extra expense for me.

 

Lesley

[Love2teach0307]

I'm going out on a limb and totally redoing WWE using our poetry selections. I love the book selections from WWE, but we're reading them on our time schedule. Reading only an excerpt frustrated my child. So since we memorize poetry regularly, her copywork and mechanics come twice a week from our poem at the time. After she finishes copying a whole poem which may take up to three weeks, she gets to illustrate it. Our narrations happen naturally in history and science, but they are only oral. After each read-aloud book, her narration goes in the notebook after she illustrates a favorite part. We read a whole book every week or two. It's more of an organic feel to SWB's concepts, but it fits us. I have the SF book and just read over what parts of the writing mechanics she focuses on to help me point out the right things for her age to know. It's been amazing to me to see how many poems I find that are both good and useful for learning how to write.

[deeinfl]

Thank you to everyone who responded. I realized there are reasons for doing it both ways. I'm going to take some of the advice posted here and actually try to take an hour or two and see if I can work out a plan where I can integrate it into what we are already doing. I'm going to give that a few weeks to see how that goes before actually shelling out the big bucks for the workbook.

 

I really appreciated all of these responses!

 

Blessings!!

 

Dee :lol: